Prototypes of Opportunistic Wireless Mesh Networks Supporting Real-Time Services

Wireless mesh networks can provide for attractive solutions to telecommunication services, where cost-effective broadband access can be realized, by means of frequency reuse and lower engineering cost in installing. A novel network architecture of opportunistic mesh networks is presented here, based upon the cognitive networking concept which opportunistically utilizes the network resources including both spectrum bandwidth and mesh station availability. The proof-of-concept prototypes are developed to show: (1) the supportance of real-time traffic over multiple wireless hops by the opportunistic resource utilization; (2) the drop-and-play networking model which can vastly save the network planning/deployment costs.